Autumn in the Park
by Viviane Latour
Summary: Gundam Wing: A routine excursion to a favored park precipitates a visit from a long-missed friend.


Standard Disclaimers: Gundam Wing isn't mine. It belongs to the nice people at Sunrise, Bandai, and all of the other Japanese companies that made this anime happen. So please, take pity and don't sue an impoverished (well, not exactly, but close enough) college student.

Rated G for nothing objectionable. No violence, no language, no perversion of any sort. I'll write violence, but none of the rest.

  
  
Autumn in the Park  
By Viviane Latour  
  
  


I sat on my usual bench in my favorite tiny, quiet park as the sun set, under an ancient tree of unknown variety that had probably seen the fall of my father's kingdom and a hundred kingdoms before it; this was my nightly respite from the flashbulbs and microphones that otherwise characterized my existance. Unlike every other evening, however, this park had an additional visitor besides myself: a man, probably about my age, with forcibly tamed brown hair touched by a bit of gray, standing some slight distance away, looking at small white cards -- perhaps postcards or photographs? -- in his hands. He looked slightly familiar, but after a life as a politician, everyone begins to look the same. Either way, he did not take notice of me, sitting in the shadow of the tree. As the daylight faded, he began to look impatient, alternately looking at the sky and checking his watch, and finally set down his parcel in the grass before wandering back to wherever it was he came from.

Curiosity got the better of me, and I ventured out to see what it was that the stranger left behind. It was a letter, with my name carefully printed on the envelope, lying on top of a small stack of photographs. I opened it and read:

_"Dear Relena,   
_

You are reading this now because you did not recognize me. I came to visit you tonight, in the park that I learned was your favorite escape from the reporters and advisors that plague you otherwise. After so long a separation, I suppose I expected it, but I cannot help but feel disappointed nonetheless. I wrote this letter to help explain my extended absense.

"I left following the Mariemaia incident fully intent on returning after I learned to adapt to civilian life. It took much longer than I anticipated. I ventured out to one of the more distant colonies and found a job. To stave off boredom on my infrequent and irregular days without work, I took up a volunteer position building houses and apartment buildings for the colony's homeless. It was ironic, really, that some of the most destitute people -- complete strangers -- I could find could teach me the most about living when I could have funds for the rest of my life with a few simple keystrokes. But teach me they did, and although it took years, I learned what it was to be someone other than a soldier. Eventually, I was ready to face you again.

"When I tried to find you, fate most unfortunately intervened. I visited a regional Preventers office to seek a position that would inevitably bring me back into contact with you, but I discovered there that budgetary problems beyond your control precluded the hiring of any new members. It was not until it was too late that I was told that you had kept a single position open for me for years after almost everything else had been dismantled. Had I changed so much that no one at the office realized who I was, or were they simply unaware of the vacancy? I will never know.

"I returned to the Cinq Kingdom to find you several times, but you were always somewhere else, in another area of the world, visiting a colony, or even observing the progress of your brother's pet project on Mars. I tried to leave you a note, find out when you would be back, but your staff would not believe me when I told them who I was. The other pilots were not there to confirm my identity; they had long ago continued with their lives, I supposed. It was then that I realized that I had to continue with mine. I'm sorry, Relena, I tried to find you, but I couldn't wait forever.

"My wife died a few years ago, and my daughter graduated from college in the spring, so I came back to see you one more time before we both grow too old to travel. I wanted to let you know that I never forgot about you, Relena. Until we see each other again,

"Yours truly,  
Heero Yuy"  


I picked up the photographs and sorted through them. Most of them were ten years old, at least. There were a couple of family portraits, one old, from when his daughter was just an infant, and one more recent, the only new one I could find, along with several of him and his late wife, and a few childhood pictures of his daughter. The single picture that caught my attention the most was taken when his daughter was about twelve years old; she was wearing her dark hair exactly as I used to in my youth, when Heero and I first met. I gathered up the photos and the letter and left the park just as the streetlights flickered on, just before my after-dinner appointments would begin to wonder about my whereabouts.

It's a tragedy that I waited my entire life for someone, that, in the end, I could not even recognize.


End file.
